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AMD's New Venice Core Shows Overclocking Potential
Vigile writes "It looks like the new Venice core processors from AMD are going to offer more than just 90nm technology through the entire line up. According to this article on PC Perspective, it is going to offer a lot of headroom for future processors as the author was able to overclock their 2.0 GHz sample to 2.8 GHz! I think I hear an FX-61 calling my name!"
Will it be easy to unlock these though, because if there is potentially to destory it I would not risk it.
We know that clock for clock, AMDs are faster than Intels. So what does 2.8 Ghz in AMD mean in terms of Intel performance?
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
I think I hear an FX-61 calling my name!
Sorry, actually, that's my Intel chip. Noisy bugger.
What real good does overclocking 2 to 2.8 really do? These cores keep getting faster and faster, yet the increase in number of floating-point operations per second achieved isn't really that spectacular. How about a more intelligent (parallel) architecture to begin with?
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I don't mean to be flip, but if I can't judge the power of a processor by a simple metric like "megahertz" or nowadays "gigahertz", how can I know which processor is best suited to me? I've got a 2.8GHz P4 machine sitting next to me. How is that not better than the 2.0GHz AMD "Venice" processor that's only clocking in at 2.0GHz?
If CPU speed is irrelevant to processor power, then why do we keep talking about it?
An 800MHz overclock on stock cooling is absolutely incredible... But it kind of makes me wonder why AMD doesn't make the default core speed on the proc higher.
The Barton core is awesome, and AMD is just refining their game here, working with the same basic silicon for the A64 and the XP. Intel's brains are divided up among way too many incompatible irrelevent architectures.
Just my 2 cents.
What, me worry?
If CPU speed is irrelevant to processor power, then why do we keep talking about it?
It's not irrelevant if you don't make stupid architectural changes specifically designed to raise the clock speed, like Intel did with Prescott. It's not everything, but it's still something.
Or were you just trolling for Intel?
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How about a more intelligent (parallel) architecture to begin with?
Unless you have a way around the von Neumann bottleneck, what intelligent architecture are you thinking about? Adding multiple cores will eventually hit a wall because of memory bus contention. The only solution I see is for someone to create a memory architecture that permits unlimited simultaneous memory access. At that point, fast processors will not matter much. Just have a bunch of cheap processors share a single huge memory space.
AMD chips have multipliers unlocked downwards. That means if its got a 10x or 12x multiplier, you can chose 8, 9, 10, up to the default number. It works well, even if you dont want to OC, you can turn down the multiplier and crank up the FSB for better performance.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Oh, not really. I've heard of a few people even getting to 3GHz with Winchester (the previous core) on air.
Any chip made with an insulated-gate fabrication technology will consume power in proportion to the frequency at which it's clocked. Power is the product of voltage and current, and it takes current to charge all those tiny little gate capacitors.
P=E*I. Not just a good idea, yadda yadda.
This is so dejavu.
Now it's AMD's turn to pull an Even Steven on Intel with cool running cpus that also O/C high. That SOI sure does wonders ever since they started using it on the first A64's.
Most people don't run around overclocking their cpus but it is a great market to target (oh I'm da rappa!) because Intel has had great cores to O/C ever since the first Northwoods until the first Prescott, the bacon-cooker.
Parent doesn't really seem to know what he's talking about (perhaps he glanced at an architecture book once). The memory hierarchy of almost all modern processors ensures that only a very tiny portion of instructions generate real disk accesses. Relatively few apps are really effected by storage speed... look at some gaming/application benchmarks for a 10k rpm disk vs. a 7.2k rpm disk with the same buffer size.
gigahertz are a fairly useless comparison between different chip types. A 2.0 ghz AMD64 might run circles around your 2.8ghz P4, while a 1.5Ghz Pentium-M could go faster than an AMD XP 1800 without worries. Architectures make this happen. If a 2.0ghz AMD64 can go the same speed as a 2.8ghz P4, obviously the 2.0ghz AMD64 is running more instructions per megahert. This means, that each one counts for more. Thus, a .8ghz increase is a huge increase in speed. Imagine running a 2.0ghz P4. Not very fun, eh? Now, the difference between a 2.0ghz P4 and a 2.8Ghz P4 is smaller than the difference between a 2.0Ghz AMD64, and a 2.8Ghz version of the same exact chip. That is a huge speed increase!
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I remember when there was an actual megahertz race between amd and intel. Now it appears as though everyone is out breath. I can't believe we are still talking about 2.0 ghz AMD processors. Are they ever going to break 3 GHz? Intel seems to be no better off. How long was it since the first 3 Ghz was release and there is no 4 Ghz chips in sight? As a mac user, I can only revelled that physics has caught up with everyone and I no longer have to spout out about the megahertz myth in defence of my platform.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
There's plenty of explinations.
Here's some:
A) The chip is designed to run very cool. Overclocking it makes it hot, but it still runs fine. Just very hot.
B) The chip is designed to be run at higher speeds, and the initial offering is clocked-down. This gives AMD a few steps before more core/retooling work.
C) The cooler that comes with the CPU is very good.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I think of AMD64 more as a consumer, then a flame=seeker. Is it the most powerful - NO CLUE Is it stable - YES Is it cooler - YES Is it affordable - YES Is it for a PC - YES Why should I buy anything that is more advertised, but actually too expensive. I dont buy it. Others buy it. But not me! I like my AMD :)
IRTFA and I am going to say it once:
Overclocking capabilities does not mean just speed, they mean stability under extreme circumstances, therefore granted stability under normal circumstances!
sex is better than war!
The parent is currently moderated "Insightful" -- but it isn't. It's wrong.
P = I^2 R. For a processor, the current applied to each transistor is proportional to the clock frequency and the resistance is constant, so the power consumption per transistor (ceteris paribus) rises as the square of the clock rate. For modern processors, the power consumption of the chip is basically due to the total switching power of the transistors, and thus the power consumption rises roughly as the square of clock speed.
Windows boot @2.9, memtest stable at 3.0, prime95 24 hours stable @2.7... here's a massive Winchester overclocking thread:
a ge=1
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=364223&p
One big reason is the difference in FSB. Yours is probably what...800MHz max? Intel's fastest FSB is 1066 MHz while AMD's fastest is 2.0 GHz....huge difference there! Even if you had identical core processors *say P4 Prescotts* and they were both at 2.0 GHz but one had a 533MHz FSB and the other had a 1066MHz FSB the one with the 1066MHz FSB would be MUCH faster since the whole system could transfer data among its components faster. That's why when overclocking it's normally better to drop the multiplier on the processor a little and crank up the FSB.
I posted this yesterday.
-1 Redundant? Yeah, sure. But it's sad to see this place being overrun not only by racist posters but by moderators who are as well.
Who ever said judging the performance of many different cpus just by looking at the "megahertz" was good enough?
You want to know which cpu is faster than what? read reviews. Easiest and best way. Forget mhz, hell, even forget technical data if you don't feel like understanding it. Simply check out a few reviews on one product, take note of the benchmark results that interest you (such as gaming or compiling) and then see if the results from the different reviewers make any sense. If they look similar, then you can trust them.
In my case, I'm a gamer so I'll do what? Look at reviews and take note of which cpu is faster than which. In the end with a few sites being checked, I can make a conclusion unless all the results are unique. Most sites out there show the same pattern for gaming, A64 > P4. Then somehow, that must be a reliable way to measure performance among different processors, right? Just make sure not to read from crappy reviewers (did I just hear an echo saying "toms hardware"?..)
Intel and AMD chips have completely different designs. In general, Intel chips are designed to blast through simple code very quickly (as Intel thought that's all chips would be doing by now), and AMD chips are designed to be able to handle branches and conditional code better. Also, current AMD chips have a memory controller on the chip itself rather than on a helper chip on the motherboard, which makes their memory access faster.
Before Intel hit the gHz wall, the strategy was actually working out pretty well. They were at a bit of a disandvantage in some areas, but for the most part the clock speeds were so high it didn't matter.
With the new Prescott core in Intel chips, they increased the penalty for branching in anticipation of still higher clock speeds. Those speeds never came, so they're at a disadvantage now.
At more or less the same time, AMD upgraded the memory interface of their chips, which improves performance in most areas in addition to helping them catch up with media stuff. At the same time they kept and in some cases improved their performance on branchy code. They avoided the gHz wall by improving performance without pumping clock speed.
I think Intel assumed Itanium would take over in areas that needed branchy code back when they comitted to the Pentium 4 design in the 90s. It arrived very late, and it turns out regular desktop users still need to deal with branchy code.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
P=I^2R only for purely passively resistive circuits, where the current can be determined by voltage divided by resistance using Ohm's Law.
But a CPU is a gated transistor circuit. Current is based on the number of times transistors are filled and dumped of charge, which of course is driven directly by the frequency. Voltage is fixed, so CPU wattage is pretty much linear with frequency.
Here is a better overview of the changes and feature additions
Hey look no pointless curley braces or semicolons... just like Python
This should be on the Slashdot front page
In CMOS, Power=CVF^2 + Leakage. I^2R assumes a constant, non switching current and a resistive load. A CPU has neither.
As long as you don't boost V to make the part capable of running even faster, there's no square term.
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With AMDs hypertransport and integrated northbridge, every processor you add adds another memory bus. It's call NUMA, for non uniform memory architecture, supported in Server 2003, XP Pro since sp2 and Linux since 2.4, perhaps earlier.
NUMA was first used by SGI with their late 90s MIPS machines.
Intel uses a shared bus, with the exactly the limitations you describe, except with their Itanium in 8 way+ configuration.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
LOL Site is brill! Worth losing O/T karma for :)
:D
Use bugger in the same way as wanker, it can be friendly, ';) you wanker'; aggressive ': you WANKER'; funny ':P You Wanker' etc.
Over this side of the pond the use of context is important; thus your tone of voice and body language adds different meaning to a word that can range from an insult to a salutation.
In this context the GP meant for 'bugger' to be substituted with any one of the following not very exaustive list:-
'blighter'; 'begger'; 'swine'; 'thing'; 'beast';
It has been my pleasure to educate you
In the end, It's all bovine dung you know
Actually, leakage power surpassed switching power during the shrink from 130nm ot 90nm as the number one for power consumption.
Your formula is correct, but it now accounts for a much smaler fraction of the total power.
Intel has abandoned high k dielectrics at 65 nm, and gone for air gap, "the best k is no k at all", an extremely expensive process, which is an indicator of how fundamentally extrordinary a problem leakage has become.
Intel's very business model relies on cheap processes, so the move to air gap is telling.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Not necessarily. A lot of CPU's fail testing at very high speeds but run with perfect stability at lower speeds. The CPU companies are profit driven, so they're happy to get some money for the CPU instead of throwing it.
Now, you can get yourself a cheaper CPU and overclock it, knowing it's probably capable of higher speeds, but there's a big risk of stability issues.
The current generations of CPU manufacturing process make very good error free batches compared to what it used to be like. So CPU's tend to work quite well at high speeds but still get badged down. That makes sense from a corporate perspective - if there is demand for a slower, cheaper CPU, you can sell into that market with higher specced CPU's. That just happens to be the way the market works.
The alternatives are untenable. It makes no sense for AMD to deliberately make a batch of CPU's specifically intended to be 2.0GHz when it costs the same as making a batch of 2.8GHz CPUs. AMD then has the *choice* of selling these CPUs at whatever speeds and prices the market demands.
Would the parent prefer than AMD make special 2GHz only CPU's to sell? Or perhaps AMD should instead only sell > $600 high end CPUs and not sell budget range CPUs at all?
This is the way the industry works. If you don't like it, feel free to go back to using transistors instead of IC's.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
What a load of BS, Try any recent kde or gnome based distro on anything slightly old and it you'll see its unusable, while linux itself runs fine i've yet to see a decent GUI, they're all obsessed with letting you configure your windows to look absolutely any way you want, when all anyone really wants is fast response time and a few reasonable config options. Boot windows 2000 (the only decent creation out of redmond) on the same PC and you'll see some what i mean. CPU speed and memory aren't so important if you've been running a simple word/web system for for the last few years, but when it comes to games, 3d-animation, video editing, image editing, audio composing/mixing, or even just compiling, then the difference is high. Also people often forget their hard-drive witch can be slow as shit.
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There are some cases you can use bugger where you can't use wanker, though, such as "bugger me backwards with a stiff wire brush."
Yup. I'm in the choir, Mr. Pastor. I went through the overclocking phase myself, then grew up and out of it. Many overclockers don't understand how a CPU works, much less why the *best* outcome of overclocking is a hard crash (because then you know for sure that you've pushed too far). The most insidious errors don't cause crashes... the computer just keeps cranking along just fine but is outputing incorrect results.
They don't understand that the governor for how fast a CPU runs isn't directly time... it's distance (and because of distance, time). They probably don't know much about data setup and hold times, hysteresis, the fact that computing incorrect values because of setup/hold time violations won't cause a crash, you'll just get wrong answers without a crash, etc.
But hey, they are able to get 2% faster computers while spending less money! That is teh kewl!
It makes absolutely no sense to introduce inefficiancies into the marketplace.
This is precisely why speed-binning exists. When AMD takes 2.6GHz-rated chips and marks them as 2.0 GHz, they are AVOIDING market inefficiencies.
The market only has so much demand at a particular pricepoint at a particular time. Chips cannot sell themselves just because they are "faster," the market only buys the chips when there is a perceived "need" for them.
This is why, as time goes on, speed grades increase quite frequently, but the overall pricing structure changes VERY slowly. Not that the market forces are set in stone...there are more high-end enthusiasts than there were say, a decade ago, but the number is still relatively small, and it has take a lot of time and effort for manufacturers to create and nurture that growing market.
So, here's how speed-binning relates to this market. Let's say AMD's new Venice core can hit 2.6 GHz 40% of the time. That means 60% of your processors have to be downgraded in rating, but that's no big deal because the demand for your "BEST" processor (the 2.6 GHz) is only a few percent of your total processors sold. That is to say, only 5% of people in this competitive market will pay $600 for a processor that is that good.
Now, what if 75% of your total processor sales market wants a "GOOD ENOUGH" processor? You look at your yields: 40% of your processors can hit 2.6 GHz, but let's say 80% hit 2.0 GHz. If you sell a 2.0GHz as your "GOOD ENOUGH," this means you can throw out a lot less processors by serving multiple market segments. It's better than selling the entire 40% of all processors as 2.6GHz, as that would produce market inefficiencies as 95% of buyers would be unwilling to spend $600 in this competitive market.
Yes, you could just sell processors at their maximum tested speed, but market trends are not typically well reflected by yields, so you have to tailor your outputs to fit the market demand via speed-binning. Some of your 2.6, 2.4 and 2.2 GHz chips end up marked as 2.0 GHz to meet demand.
Thus, your 2.0GHz processors end up as a mix...some of them really can't do much better than 2.0 GHz, while others have been speed-binned to meet demand. Thus, you are not guaranteed a marvelous overclocker if you buy the 2.0 GHz processor...and that has always been the fun of overclocking, the mystery and risk involved. Did you buy a dud, or will this one be a bargain screamer?
Myself, I don't overclock much anymore...but it used to be a lot of fun seeing how far I could push chips, before I wanted a system that just worked.
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And occasionally whores for Karma.